KIRKUS REVIEW

A young
woman’s participation in a survival reality show conceals an actual apocalyptic
event in the outside world.

Telling
herself that she is after one last big adventure before starting a family, Zoo (as
she is dubbed by producers) decides to participate in a hard-core wilderness
survival show. The novel’s first narrative strand takes us through the show’s
initial week: we see a series of group and solo challenges, such as tracking
animals and filtering water, accomplished in order to earn prizes. We are also
introduced to the reality show contestants, who are called by easy-label names
like Asian Chick and Air Force. Zoo quickly rises as a leader among the
contestants—she's easy to get along with and has “moxie.” But intercut with the
narrative of the show’s first week is that of Zoo alone, on what she believes
is a long solo challenge. Thinking that the production team has cleared out
entire towns and strategically placed corpselike “props” (complete with the
smell of decay), Zoo moves east in the direction of her home, determined to be
the last one standing and the winner of the $1 million prize. In her debut
novel, Oliva has written a book that is clever in the best sense: she is able
to skewer reality show culture and dystopian tropes while never letting concept
or critique become more important than a good yarn. The novel is thoroughly
steeped in its times—the use of a Reddit-like forum plays a key plot role—but
unlike other dystopian novels, it doesn’t so much use contemporary times to
warn us about potential future collapse as it shows what impact our times have
on the ways we think about identity and human relationships.

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